Art Brut

Seinfeld? Meh. Tonight Art Brut wrote the show about nothing. Seriously, smack dab in the middle of MIT/Harvard country, with all the super androids and cures for cancer being invented a few blocks over, the band left a crowd of brainiacs slack-jawed with such lines as "Look at us! We formed a band!" Seinfeld always distanced himself from the banalities, rhetorically asking "What's the deal with...?" before riffing on cottage cheese or something. Eddie Argos never asks such questions-- he's seamlessly engaged in rating weekends good or bad, having coffee after failed sex, and falling in love with girls because they remind him of Emily Kane.

Of course people lapped it up: Art Brut somehow justified life's quotidian drone by projecting it on the rock'n'roll stage, all for 12 bucks. Even crazier, people identified with Eddie Argos on an equally mundane level. "Weird, he doesn't look like I thought he would," a friend commented to me. "I thought he'd look like I do." And instead of laughing, I realized I'd reacted the same way too. Argos talked, sang, and controlled the stage like a rock star. But no one wants to smoke weed and discuss Buddhism with the dude; they just want him around when they're solving crossword puzzles or something, like an adult-sized My Buddy doll.

The band's stage bit crossed the Hives with Monty Python-- Argos mock-smugly adopted "top of the pops" as Art Brut's live mantra, prefaced each song with a military "Art Brut, are you ready?", yet poked fun at his own rock status. His stage entrance on "Enter Sandman" was brilliant-- the funniest band opening with the funniest riff to the funniest song ever-- and somehow it meshed so smoothly into "Formed a Band". He ironically cited this web site when announcing Bang Bang's U.S. release date, then told the crowd just to download it, since the band's independently wealthy.

Not to kick up sophomore album talk so soon, but the band's new stuff really killed. I always worry if it's possible for a band to improve when their shtick is sounding like amateurs, yet not to get too pro-am about it in the process. At first, the verse riff to "Blame It on the Trains" seared a little too McLusky-like, as if Argos wasn't complaining about waking up early but telling the Tube to go to Hell. Yet there's no reason Art Brut can't sound like McLusky, or like the Pixies on "These Animal Menswe@r", or like a No Doubt/Everclear/mid-90s Top 40 mish-mash on a new song about Argos's brother's text messages. There's no logical next step, which makes their next move all the more riveting.

A few updates felt gratuitous, like Argos rattling off his big trio of influences (Jonathan Richman, Pixies, Lemonheads) at the end of "Good Weekend" or axing the bridge of "Emily Kane" to inform us he wasn't in love with Emily Kane at age 15, but rather in love with being in love at age 15. The song makes that point perfectly clear without a John Hughes-packaged quote, thank you, and it's not like Argos should be reaching for one-liners. The crowd hung onto his every quip like they were Simpsons punchlines, and if you happened to have forgotten "Popular culture no longer applies to me" or "I've seen her naked...twice!!!", there was a $20 shirt sitting on sale there to remind you. Not that I'm against the marketing of the band's zinger repertoire or anything, but I miss the days when Eddie's question "Why don't our parents worry about us?" felt like an inside joke we shared. I know, I know, I'm being greedy, but now Mr. IMDB Jerk is walking around spewing "No soup for you!" and "Modern art makes me want to rock out!" interchangeably, and I've gotta share this awesome band with him.